Hoax

The 22-year-old Palmdale man who created Manti Te'o's fake girlfriend broke his silence for the first time, saying he perpetrated the elaborate hoax to build a relationship with the football star. Ronaiah Tuiasosopo pretended to be Te'o's girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, for months, communicating on the phone and through social media. Tuiasosopo went so far as to disguise his voice to sound like a woman's when he spoke to Te'o on the phone, his attorney, Milton Grimes, said in an interview with The Times.

It would be refreshing if he finally stepped up and admitted, as even the marginally educated fan already knows, that he made a colossal mistake. Manti Te'o? Nope. Jim Buss. Bud Chapman Northridge :: You can fool some Lakers fans some of the time and some Lakers fans all of the time, but you can't fool all of the Lakers fans all of the time. Every Lakers fan I've spoken with believes that the hiring of Mike D'Antoni was as big a mistake as the hiring of Mike Brown.

Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, the alleged culprit behind the fake girlfriend hoax to which Notre Dame football star and Heisman Trophy runner-up Manti Te'o fell victim, will give his first interview in a televised appearance on the “Dr. Phil Show,” a spokesperson for the show confirmed to the Associated Press. Information regarding the details of the interview and its air date have not been released. Tuiasosopo is reportedly the person behind a fake online profile for Lennay Kekua, who developed a relationship with Te'o dating to 2009.

In an interview with Katie Couric on Thursday, a few voicemails that Manti Te'o's "girlfriend" left him were played on the air. The voice of Kekua reportedly belongs to Ronaiah Tuiasosopo , who apparently disguised his voice. After the first message was played, Te'o said: "It sounds like a girl, doesn't it?" "It does," Couric said. Tuiasosopo apparently masterminded the hoax against Te'o by creating a fake online profile for a made-up woman named Kekua. Tuiasosopo then apparently talked to Te'o over the phone while pretending to be Kekua.

As details of the Manti Te'o Internet hoax trickle out, a very important question has remained unanswered: Who was Te'o speaking with for hours a night? According to the New York Daily News, the Notre Dame linebacker was speaking to a man. Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, who has been identified as the perpetrator of the hoax, reportedly disguised his voice to sound feminine and would talk to Te'o over the phone for hours at a time pretending to be Lennay Kekua, Tuiasosopo's attorney, Milton Grimes, told the newspaper.

This week, Notre Dame football player Manti Te'o sat down for his first on-camera interview to discuss the controversy surrounding his girlfriend hoax. But he wasn't sitting across from Oprah Winfrey, the current queen of the sports world exclusive. He was talking to Katie Couric. So how did Couric manage to beat out Winfrey for the juicy get? After all, Winfrey just snagged international coverage and a reported audience of 28 million worldwide for her exclusive two-part sit-down with disgraced cycling star Lance Armstrong.

Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o admitted to talk show host Katie Couric that he answered questions about his "dead," online girlfriend even after he received a call Dec. 6 from a woman posing as the fake person. Te'o also maintained he played no part in the hoax. Pressed by Couric to admit that he was in on the deception, the All-American said he was convinced the woman he knew as Lennay Kekua died in September. Te'o claims he never met Kekua in person but developed a serious relationship with her through phone calls and electronic messages.

  Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o admitted that he lied to the media and the public after discovering his online girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, did not exist, he admitted during an interview with Katie Couric. "Katie, put yourself in my situation. I, my whole world told me that she died on Sept. 12. Everybody knew that. This girl, who I committed myself to, died on Sept. 12," Te'o said. Te'o said he received a phone call Dec. 6 from a woman claiming she was Kekua, even though Kekua had allegedly passed away three months earlier.

Los Angeles police are recalibrating their response to some emergency calls in light of a series of prank "swatting" calls reporting violent incidents at the homes of celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, Justin Bieber and now Chris Brown. Officers will continue to respond immediately, in large numbers and with force if needed, to reports of crime at the homes of such VIPs, top Los Angeles Police Department officials said. But they are trying to warn officers more quickly in cases where an emergency call appears to have the hallmarks of swatting.

Manti Te'o's imaginary girlfriend is back in the news. It seems the person tweeting from the fake Lennay Kekua Twitter account once lectured others on faking deaths. Deadspin.com shared numerous tweets sent from the Twitter account of Kekua. The Twitter account has been deleted, but Deadspin was able to recover nearly all of the tweets. What did Kekua tweet? Well, how about this one on Feb. 3, 2012: "I don't think joking around with people's deaths (celebrity or not) is funny.